Soap has a very long history dating back to the Babylonian Empire. The chief ingredients of soap are: coconut oil, palm oil and tallow, a by-product of the frozen and canned meat trade. Sometimes oil from cotton seeds and soya beans is used. Resin from certain sorts of pine-trees goes into household soaps. The oils [...]

Each of us has an urge to cheat on time. The same deep need which moved primitive man to consult witch doctors claiming to read the future in the patterns of blood flowing from the wound of a gored suckling pig, or which caused ancient Greeks to make the arduous journey to Parnassus to seek [...]

Snakes belong to the class of reptiles. They are cold-­blooded, air-breathing scaled vertebrates. There are about 2,000 kinds of snakes in the world. There are three kinds of snakes living in England — the grass-snake, the smooth-snake and the adder, the lat­ter carrying poison (sometimes called viper, which means one that carries poison). The grass-snake [...]